For your listening pleasure: Kieran Haynes 24hr Album, now compile into one handy track for ease of use.
Kieran finished at 9.30am, completing 18 tracks in just 23 hours.
Inspired by the legendary healing properties of the nearby Well of Lyskiret, I wrote and recorded 18 songs telling a tale of love, curiosity and well, wells.
Working on such a tight timescale was a weird experience me. I rarely spend less than a week writing a single song, and it’ll often take me years to finally turn an idea or piece of music something I’m happy with.
Despite attempting to use the first couple of hours to devise a narrative for the full 24 songs, I found myself often actually only planning one or two songs ahead. Given this, I’m surprised at how well the resulting narrative hangs together. I’m sure I’d have created a more polished set of songs (with a stronger central concept) if I’d had more time, but I’m equally sure that the recordings I did make gained something – not least a nice sense of throwaway urgency – from the limits placed on their production.
As the memory of the numbed mumbling and sleepless strumming fades, it’s strange to discover just how much I actually managed to do. There are songs I’d completely forgotten about in the dash toward the next, and the next, and the finish line, and the whole collection feels a little as if it’s simply appeared in my life of it’s own accord. It’s a bit like waking up from a dream in which you’ve been working really hard, and then being slightly surprised to find that everything you’ve been working on is there, piled up beside your bed.
I’ve learnt that it can be interesting, and useful, to rein in my perfectionism – that there can be value in producing things quickly and haphazardly: sometimes a stack of hastily collected firewood is as welcome as an immaculately designed log cabin.
Do you have any advice for anyone who wants to try the 24hr Comic challenge?
Treat it as an experiment, and aim for 24, even if it means compromising the quality of your work. You might feel that what you’re producing is substandard and ill thought out, but it doesn’t mean that other people won’t appreciate it, or that it won’t ultimately contribute towards a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. And have faith in your imagination to find a way to pull it all together at the end. Even after a day and night’s non-stop exercise, it almost certainly will.
Finally, bend the rules as much as you like if it’s going to help you finish – as the 24 hours, and my mind, unravelled, my definition of a ‘song’ became increasingly loose.
